


Blood and Bones

by Phrenotobe



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/F, Phila Lives au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2018-09-19 18:13:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9453767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phrenotobe/pseuds/Phrenotobe
Summary: It may take a while, but after the war, Phila finds her way home.Emmeryn closes her eyes, fingertips tracing grooves on the table top. It feels nothing like the hardness of Phila’s palms, the blunt buff of a loving kiss before a promise is made.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm planning three or so chapters for this. I'm not sure if it'll finish in that many, but it's a start. I might also change the rating upward if the story merits it. I'll play it by ear.

Emmeryn has trouble holding the threads of her memory now. She stops mid-sentence, pausing between two words, getting locked in that moment and coming to stop.

She came back a saint, or so they say. Returned through Naga's grace, beautiful as ever and back unbowed, alive and well. A sage is not so easily killed.

On the estate, tucked comfortably in the garden of the castle grounds, she is tended by two quiet women with soft voices. Emmeryn can't remember their names, can't always remember where she is when she wakes up - the desert of Plegia's white sky still blinds her, some days.

But as saints and mythology keep living, she persists. Her chest still rises and falls with every breath. The heart beneath her ribs beats at a constant pace. The gestures of spells learned in her youth still get written by the movements of her hands, though of late, she hasn't needed them.

She reaches for the spoon on the table and misses. Her eyes don't focus like they used to. She tries again.

There was something that Phila always said – before every time she rode out to tend the borders.  
Emmeryn mouths the words, thinking.

Phila has blue hair. It is thick and dry, unlike anything else Emmeryn has ever touched. Phila's hair is not like silk, not when she pulls it from the pins that hold it up and keep it from her face. Emmeryn has full command of some memories – the kind that tie to emotion, readily visible.

Emmeryn closes her eyes, fingertips tracing grooves on the table top. It feels nothing like the hardness of Phila’s palms, the blunt buff of a loving kiss before a promise is made.

She ignores the spoon on the table, turning away from the meal laid out and warm to walk out into the garden. It is the soft grass and wet ground of the early season, ere the harvest.

Her hand curls with the absence of a comforting grip, nobody on her right side to point out flowers to. She isn’t sure how to ask the women nearby – they blend, anonymously, difficult to discern.

Phila would be able to tell which was which; she always has a memory for such. Emmeryn is always enchanted instead by the dark dot that sits at the corner of Phila’s eye. It draws her gaze from the brilliant red of her gaze to the rise of her cheekbone, down to the angle of her jaw.

That habitual ache that feels distinct and yawning like hunger pulls at the strings of Emmeryn’s heart. Every time she remembers the last time she saw Phila, fierce and brave. All her love is all of her duty. And like a saint, she shall persist.

Emmeryn turns, and goes back inside to try again. One day in the future, she will walk the garden, and her hand will not be empty. Phila will return as she has returned. Perhaps changed; but she cannot be gone.


	2. Chapter 2

Phila’s throat no longer can sing; whatever forces put her back together did not put in mind that lungs were made for drawing a full breath. She comes to life like a lie does; there is no justification for why she lives. 

She lives in the desert, pale hair still paler. It bleaches almost white by the strength of the sun. In the morning she wakes, surprised to see the dawn, and draws a long, jagged breath. Her chest aches, somewhere hooked under her ribs. 

The Plegians who found her were there for the pickings to be found after the battle. They picked up the broken weapons upon the hard-packed sandstone, and brought her into the shadow of the ruins, searching for her heartbeat. Their leader put her hand over Phila’s nose to feel for an exhale. The staff broke, they tell her, on the third try. 

Phila’s red eyes aren’t unusual in Plegia. She sits at their fire and helps prepare their food, and nobody stares or pretends not to notice. She listens to them talk, comforted by the sound. Her youth was spent in the Ylissean barracks, sleeping with the noise of twenty others. Silent nights don’t do her any good. 

When the camp moves, Phila does. She leans on their routine, glad for the way they accept her presence. Walking is hard, so Phila only travels when they do, drawing longer and longer away from her home back in Ylisse. 

A day’s walk for others is now three for her, having to stop at every half mile. At first her drive to match pace with the leader succeeds, but eventually she slips to the middle of the line, then the end. She kneels in the dirt, dragging air into her lungs, the inhale becoming a cycle that is so frantic and painful that she thinks it will never stop. She can’t see; the sand is white, the sky is white, and the hand that takes her arm and helps her from the ground is barely visible. 

She didn’t expect to be saved twice. Her companions cover her head against the sun, pat her back and fit her into the back of the cart. Chickens peck at her fingers, nest in the furl of her cloak, and sit pompously in her lap. It aches to be alive, but she is alive. 

Being alive like this is a new experience that Phila tries to hold as tightly as she can. Plegia is drawn in brown and gold, as much as Ylisse is green and silver, and remembering the gardens is like trying to remember a different time. 

Phila craves the sunset, the hum of the evening as the sky burns out to the last light. The desert cools and she breathes again.


End file.
